My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

you kept the revisions from yesterday,' Omar said, adjusting his glasses.

'I'd like a fresh script,' Sixby said, drumming his fingers.

I'd gotten my copy from Omar earlier and slid it over to Sixby, scooting closer to share with him. I watched as he crossed out all the italicized acting directions associated with his lines, words like gently and loudly. Perhaps he didn't need anyone telling him how to act. I read my lines in what I hoped sounded plummy—My Jane Austen mouthed them painfully with me. When I looked up, Nikki nodded and Sixby whispered, 'Excellent. Don't forget we're partners for the follies,' and he patted my arm. My Jane Austen took a deep breath. How could I forget? He didn't coach me as he did the others, probably because I was just standing in. We were reading the scene where Mary Crawford is recruited to join the theatricals, and in the middle of reading my line where I say, 'What gentleman among you am I to have the pleasure of making love to,' the door opened. Magda's terrible presence filled the room and she interrupted me. Had an actual plum been in my mouth, I would have choked to death.

'Thank you, Lily,' she said. 'You aren't needed here.'

She couldn't even let me finish my line. My blood boiled and stress shaved moments from my life as they continued reading. No one watched me walk out.

*   *   *

That evening, I took a seat next to Omar in the conference room where a small audience gathered for an impromptu talk entitled, 'Mansfield Park: Convention or Invention?' A lecture idea born at lunch over a bottle of Cabernet Nigel drank with his friend, a professor from a women's college near London. All the writing students were here as well as a representative in Regency attire who occupied the front row, strategically positioned to snag Nigel for a word about ball dates as soon as the talk ended.

Where would we get enough china for a tea party? Paper cups were not an option.

No actors were present since Magda was rehearsing them to death in the ballroom, the opening only two days away. Nigel and the speaker, a white-haired gentleman with watery eyes behind round tortoiseshell spectacles, sipped red wine from oversized glasses.

Omar leaned toward me and said, 'Magda was looking for you.'

'Me?'

Claire closed the conference room door and gestured for Nigel to begin the introduction.

Omar whispered, 'Maybe she has an opening for you.'

'Right.' I nodded. Everyone applauded the speaker.

'So what are you going to do, stuff envelopes all summer?' he asked as the speaker adjusted his spectacles.

'Or go home,' I said, not wanting to chat, looking forward to this lecture. I couldn't go home now, couldn't leave this world where every new thing took me one step farther from my old life. 'I'm going to write a business plan,' I whispered. And organize a tea party. And get my necklace back.

'Business plan? For what?' Omar whispered back.

The speaker cleared his throat.

'Literature Live.'

Omar pointed at the floor. 'This place?'

I nodded.

'Do you know how?'

'I wrote one in college.'

He grimaced as I turned away to listen.

The professor began his talk, building his case that today's thoughtful reader often applies twenty-first- century issues to Mansfield Park, such as slavery and feminism while dismissing the issues of Austen's contemporary society, concerns like amateur theatricals, ordination, and 'family values' (air quotes his). The speaker had just introduced Austen's contemporaries: Walter Scott, Frances Burney, and Maria Edgeworth, when the door opened behind me. I ignored the disruption, concentrating instead on the disturbing news that 'Mansfield Park was written using plot and structure of the sentimental novel that Austen inherited from her literary predecessors.'

Say it isn't so, Jane Austen.

The professor put his hands in his pockets and rocked forward on the balls of his feet. 'In 1814,' he said, 'women writers wrote about education, love, and marriage.'

I jumped as a set of gold bangles entered my peripheral vision, headed for my lap. Omar saw them and looked up. The bangles were attached to Magda's arm. Magda's face came close. She dropped a note and touched my shoulder, miming the word tomorrow, and turned away. Unfolding the paper, I lost track of the speaker's thread.

Make sure Bets gets to her fitting appointment at 9:45 tomorrow morning.

Magda

She didn't even say please or thank you. I offered the paper to Omar; he looked at it but gave it back without a reaction, too intent on the speaker's thread. The nerve of Magda assigning me to be Bets's keeper. I sat there fuming as the speaker went on. 'All the characters,' he said, 'engage in self-deception except Fanny Price. Is it unusual in 1814 to have a character who examines her motives?'

I couldn't answer his question because a really good reason to deliver my roommate to the fitting appointment presented itself: if I helped Bets select her costumes, I could be sure she took one that would fit me. I imagined a white gown trimmed in blue with a matching pelisse and reticule.

The professor touched the stack of his newly published books he'd brought to sign. 'Jane Austen used the eighteenth-century novel conventions. But she invented a protagonist who struggles for self-knowledge. Mansfield Park dramatizes the emotional pain and reward of endurance.'

Everyone clapped; the talk was over.

*   *   *

To: Karen Adams [email protected]

Sent: June 13, 7:38 A.M.

From: Lillian Berry [email protected]

Subject: Helloooooo!

Karen,

Is there such a thing as Business Plans for Dummies? Could you FedEx a copy to me ASAP? It turns out they need help with administrative work for the festival and, thanks to my business degree, I've been drafted to help develop a business plan. However, I'm clueless where to start.

Thanks,

Lily

'We need to hurry,' I said, headed for the fitting appointment. 'We're late.' Bets and I passed an actor walking to rehearsals wearing headsets to help memorize lines. Once the word got out that I didn't have a part, the cast ignored me; I might as well have been invisible. When I ran into Alex, the actor of the antique record player, he said, 'I thought you were gone.'

Bets stopped to light a cigarette the minute we hit the pavement and waved to Gary, who walked on the other side of the street hauling supplies for Claire. 'There's Gary,' Bets said, exhaling, adjusting the sunglasses she wore even though it was completely overcast.

'I see him,' I said. 'Do you know your lines?'

'No,' she said. 'Why don't you wave? He'll think you don't like him.'

'Where's your script?' I asked.

'Not sure.' She yawned. 'I think it's in your JASNA bag.'

'My bag?' The bag Vera gave me when she sold me Mansfield Park. My Jane Austen Society of North America bag.